Re: Unhelpful initdb error message

On Tuesday, March 06, 2012 9:09:41 am Thom Brown wrote:
> On 6 March 2012 17:00, Adrian Klaver <adrian(dot)klaver(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> > On Tuesday, March 06, 2012 8:44:10 am Thom Brown wrote:
> >> >> And if I start my development copy, this is the content of its
> >> >> postmaster.pid:
> >> >>
> >> >> 27061
> >> >> /home/thom/Development/data
> >> >> 1331050950
> >> >> 5488
> >> >> /tmp
> >> >> localhost
> >> >> 5488001 191365126
> >> >
> >> > So how are getting the file above? I thought initdb refused to init
> >> > the directory and that you could not find pid file it was referring
> >> > to? Just on a hunch, what is in /tmp?
> >>
> >> I got the above output when I created a new data directory and initdb'd
> >> it.
> >
> > Still not understanding. In your original post you said
> > /home/thom/Development/data was the original directory you could not
> > initdb. How could it also be the new directory you can initdb as
> > indicated by the postmaster.pid?
>
> /home/thom/Development/data was causing problems so:
>
> mv data databroken
> mkdir data
> initdb
>
> ... working fine again. I then used the postmaster.pid from this when
> started up. But if I do:
>
> pg_ctl stop
> rm -rf data
> mv databroken data
> initdb
>
> ... error messages appear again.

Humph, need more coffee.

>
> > From your previous post:
> > thom(at)swift:~/Development$ pg_ctl stop
> > pg_ctl: could not send stop signal (PID: 2807): No such process
> >
> > Doing the above without qualifying which version of pg_ctl you are using
> > or what data directory you are pointing is dangerous. The combination
> > of implied pathing and preset env variables could lead to all sorts of
> > mischief.
>
> Unlikely since pg_ctl isn't available in my search path once I remove
> my local development bin dir from it. All non-client tools for the
> packaged version aren't available to normal users. Those are all in
> /usr/lib/postgresql/9.1/bin. The only ones exposed to the search path
> through symbolic links are:

env variables?

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian(dot)klaver(at)gmail(dot)com